Lifetime Politicians Ruin Christmas

Bad Santa

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: Legislators, anxious to further weaken their own term limits, placed Issue 2 on the Arkansas ballot.

The current limit is already a loiteringly long 16 years — thanks to a dishonestly worded, legislatively referred 2014 ballot amendment, which weakened the voter-initiated limits.*

Voters came back in 2018 to restore the original six-year House and eight-year Senate limits, placing a measure on the ballot that from various public reports received nearly 80 percent of the vote. But an Arkansas supreme court decision forbade counting those votes.

Still, politicians are back with another term limits attack. Issue 2 lowers the 16-year limit to 12 years. Huh, lowers? Stay with me. Issue 2 grandfathers everyone elected this year or before. Current office holders get the full 16 years — plus no lifetime limit (that gets nixed), allowing politicians to return for another 12 years after a short break.

No wonder the citizens’ group Arkansas Term Limits opposes Issue 2, calling it “The Lifetime Politician Amendment.”

Not unrelated, there is also Issue 3. Arkansas legislators have repeatedly attacked term limits and the only way for citizens to get a real term-limit on the ballot: the citizen petition process.

“Advocates acknowledged the amendment, [Issue 3], would make it harder to qualify proposals for the ballot,” the Arkansas Times’ Max Brantley explained, “but generally saw that as a good thing.”

One poison-pill provision would slice six months from the petition process, moving the deadline from warm, sunny July to cold, dark January — and forcing campaigns to flood Christmas shopping with petitioners trying to gather signatures.

Call it “The Ruin Christmas Amendment.”

Putting 2 and 3 together: The Lifetime Politicians Ruin Christmas Amendments.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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* Want to holler at that politician author who hoodwinked voters? Go to a federal prison . . . where Senator Woods relocated after convictions on political corruption.
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Paul Jacob (@Common_Sense_PJ) is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacob is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.

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